Embedding Fonts in a PDF

A PDF document is suppose to be platform independent, however that is not always the case. A lot of times when a PDF is created fonts are not embedded in the document and will be operating system dependent. While submitting PDFs to IEEE this can be an issue.

Checking if the fonts are embedded

1. Open PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader
2. Click File-> Properties
3. On the Dialog box click Fonts
4. There will be a list of fonts. For the fonts that are embedded in the document, next to the font name it would say "(embedded)" . If it says nothing next to a font name then that font is not embedded. Typically Times New Roman will be a font on windows platform that is not embedded.

Embedding Fonts

1. Create a ps file for your document (You can use "dvi2ps" in Winedt)
2. Install ghostscript on your machine. (click here to download ghostscript). Remember the installation location.
3. Open the installation directory and navigate to
   1. <install path>/gs<version number>/bin.
4. Copy paste the ps file from step 1 in the location in step 3
5. Open command prompt and change directory to
   1. <install path>/gs<version number>/bin
6. Copy paste the following text in command prompt:

gsWin32 -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile=d:\Output_filename.pdf Input_filename.ps

Remember to change the input and the output filename. Also, if the script is not able to write the output file due to access restrictions(typically on C:\ and C:\ProgramFiles ) it would not give an error.

Source for the script : http://www.hamilton.ie/gavinmc/docs/timesinpdfs.html